Barack Obama Elected President!

[Wales2004]

Here's what I'm acknowledging and it's merely a difference of opinions: I accept that you and maybe countless others think his running mate will get him a significant number of votes if he picks the right one, I just don't agree and I could be wrong but that's the way I see it. I don't know anyone who has voted for a candidate based on a running mate and I've never personally known anyone who even cares except in this cycle to say they won't vote for Obama if Clinton is on the ticket. That's the closest I've come to personally hearing anyone express an interest in a VP candidate.

As a voter, I'm not going to vote for a candidate that I would otherwise not vote for just because of the VP candidate. I don't think that BR on the ticket will make a difference unless people intended to vote for Obama anyway or unless it was a real toss up in a high enough percentage of the voters that BR swayed it (which I don't believe is going to be the case).

If Obama has a real problem with white blue collar voters then Obama needs to reach out to them and see what he can do to gain greater acceptance. John Edwards can't fix that for him. John Edwards can only make the decision to select Obama even better for some since I don't think he comes with a high negative factor and is unlikely to drive voters away.

My opinion is that Obama's running mate is important in that he can't afford to have one with a high negative factor since he's under a microscope and anything he says and does seems to be magnified one thousand times more than whatever his opponent says or does. A good running mate should keep him from having to deal with any additional negative scrutiny or at least a minimal amount of additional negative scrutiny basically.

[Max]

I think that Obama's decision to break his pledge to abide by public financing is very telling: it sends a clear message to voters that Obama is someone who cannot be trusted, and proves that Obama is just politics as usual. Obama's Senate voting record is also very telling: he votes with his party virtually 100% of the time. This is proof that Obama is not the great bi-partisan hope he claims to be.

Contrast this with John McCain. McCain's decision to stick with his pledge to use public financing proves that his word is as good as gold. And his Senate voting record is full of instances where he deviates from the Republican party line.

[EricaKane70]

Obama made no commitment about using public funding so he had every right to change his mind. I really don't blame him because even if McCain doesn't want to run a dirty campaign other republican groups will certainly do so. You can't expect him to go into this race having less than 100 million in funds compared to the over 300 million the republicans will use against him with McCain's consent or not. McCain also changed his mind about using public funding also and he had every right to do so. Although McCain does deviate from the republican party line, ever since he's become the republican nominee he's starting to turn into bush III in wanting to drill offshore, saying we'll be in iraq for 100 years, saying the troops coming home isn't top priority, taking up bush's economic plan, and catering to the republicans. I had alot of respect for McCain when he was "Mr Straight talk."

[GHJunkie4Life]

Yet we can trust McCain whos flip flopped on several major issues?

The whole money issue isn't that serious. Obama's campaign is funded by millions of working class Americans who give what little they can afford. Rather than depend on a system that is corrupt by definition...

Its funny seeing the Republicans try to make mountains out of mole hills...it just shows how desperate they are.

As for the VP position normally I don't think it would make a huge difference but this year is completely different. Obama has to be VERY careful in who he selects. Ultimately the decision is up to him and I trust him and his advisers to reach a conclusion they BOTH agree on. I'l lbe satisfied as long as its not Hilary. He just needs to weigh the pros and cons of each potential VP. As a black man I'm proud of his accomplishments and him becoming the nominee has definitely changed things in America. However if I'm totally honest with myself I think his "safest" bet would be to pick a white male as his running mate. An older guy who has a lot of experience but is friendly has deep roots with working class Americans and is open to change. Also someone who can go toe to toe with the Right and not hold back.

[Roman]

Obama is the 40th most liberal senator in the senate.

McCain is the 10th most consevative.

McCain has voted with his party and his president 90 percent of the time......but now he's this great maverick who never breaks his word.

Good as gold? The only thing that's straight talking about JM is that he can't remember what he flipflopped about recently, on top of the fact that I'm really tired of how when he needs Bush, he'll campaign with him, but when he doesn't he wants to be called a maverick.......and gets upset when the MSM doesn't kiss his backside while doing it or has the gall to ask him a tough question.

Is this the same senator who said he didn't know anything about the economy?

Who said he was for the surge, before he said it was mishandled.....and that was before he said it was working, and this is before he said is was mishandled...........

I need an aspirin to keep up with all the flip flopping.

(Oh, and BTW........the McCain campaign didn't say they would accept CF until the other day......the same day Obama said he would not accept it. How is that keeping your word?)

I think recent poll numbers have shown that, for right now, Obama doesn't need HRC as his running mate. He now leads JM by 15 points nationally.

[Roman]

http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/06/21/cam...wrap/index.html

[Roman]

http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/06/21/w...-on-television/

[Jess]

Obama did flip flop on the campaign money, but I think his flip flops are far far less telling than those of McCain's. They also are less hypocritical and have a far less effect on the American public. I doubt voters are going to get too riled up and say they care whether Obama spends money raised by small donors and no PACS or whether he runs his campaign on taxpayer dollars.

Obama turning down public funding doesn't hurt anyone except McCain. I do wish he would have just said he was turning it down because he can raise more money. Now let's look at McCain. He opposes offshore drilling and now he is for it when he addresses a big petroleum group in Houston. As far as hypocritical, McCain talks about the ills of campaign money, yet he refuses to put any restrictions on the RNC or independent groups. The RNC is raising money from all of those PACs and bad people that McCain says he opposes and McCain long before Obama's decision to forego public funding said, hmmm, I'm going to let the RNC spend all those illl-gotten gains to benefit my campaign. McCain also has said he would not discourage campaigns like the Swift Votes or the Willy Horton independent ad campaigns. That runs contrary to his long-standing position on campaign finance and transparency.

[Ponz]

Not sure where you got those rankings from.

The National Journal ranked Obama as the most liberal sentator in 2007, 10th most liberal senator in 06 and 16th most liberal sentator in 05.

The ACU ranked McCain as the 32nd most conservative senator in 2007. He has a lifetime conservative rating lower than 33 current senators.

As opposed to Obama, who has voted with his party 96.5 percent of the time yet claims to be a "post-partisan" politician.

Only Newsweek have him up by 15 points. His average lead in all polls is around 5 points.

[Wales2004]

It was kind of clever of him to point out that Barack Obama is a politician since it's clear that John McCain isn't a politician and he's got all this experience at being your average citizen voting in the Senate. I'm supposed to believe that John McCain has never said what he needed to say to get what he wants and his knowing Bush at fund raising time and distancing himself at other times is not some sort of political strategy aimed at winning him the Presidency.

I recall watching a panel on MSNBC a couple of weeks ago point out that the media doesn't take McCain to task for many things because of a 20 or so year period during which he wasn't too critical of them. Now it's sort of reward time for him and my guess is that KO will be the main person to take on any less than straight talk from McCain with any sort of vigor.

I disagree that it sends any message other than he changed his mind. I think we tend to get caught up in the "Flip Flop" label to the extent that we sometimes don't see when it makes sense for a person to change his/her mind. Would it be an awful thing for instance, if a senator who was for the war based on the information given at the time on day 1, changed her mind on day 3 after being presented with more substantial information? Do you think people would hold it against her and say she flip flopped on something major when her flip flopping turned out to be beneficial? Her opponents would make it seem like the most heinous crime but people tend to see beyond all that puffing smoke.

Campaign financing isn't one of those issues where people care whether a candidate gets his money from limited contributions of a large number of private citizens or the taxpayer's contribution from their taxes. In fact, most people would probably go for the latter and see their tax money put to some other beneficial use. The horror is in his changing his mind but not the reason why he did it and this doesn't have any legs at all because it's a weak issue. Obama is still the new kid and not knee deep in politics as usual but it would be naive to suppose that any politician isn't going to be part of te game. The question is how much and I doubt that any voters who want him to win will begrudge him forgoing traditional public financing.

Voting bi-partisan would be nonsensical if it's on issues where his party had the better stance. If he votes against bills he shouldn't and doesn't support bills he should, then there's an issue but just saying he votes with his party doesn't mean a whole lot in terms of his potential to work with Republicans.

McCain is shaky when it comes to the truth about financing his campaign so I'm not sure that his word is any better than the next person. A politician is a politician. I don't expect most people to be honest all of the time and I certainly don't believe politicians are going to be more honest than the average man who lies unnecessarily just to avoid some petty little conflict or to make his wife feel better about her ugly dress.

[Jess]

I don't know about the good as gold comment Max. :lol: McCain has flip flopped with the best of them. Most recently, he opposed offshore drilling, saying it was a bad thing and professing his love for the environment. Last week, he changed that to say that he supported offshore drilling and that the Democrats were blocking a solution to the energy crisis. he says times changed and gas prices are higher. That seems to say that the environment be damned if it will gain him a few votes.

I guess we all have to weigh which flip flop has the most significance, but I think both are flip flops.

Obama does vote with Democrats most of the time and McCain does vote with Republicans most of the time. I hope that means both of them are loyal to their convictions, but we shall see.

[Roman]

1. I got that from a MSNBC/NBC News poll, not Newsweek. I just don't post numbers from whatever poll has my candidate up in the polls.

2. At least Obama is basically the same senator he was when he came in.......not one who has changed his stance on every single issue, and then gets upset, once again, if the MSM actually ask him about it (Like being against the tax breaks before he was for it).

3. I got those numbers from a number of different sources. Just google it. It does work. The NG is one source I personally don't trust, but that is your right.

We will just have to disagree about the people we push. You push JM......and I push BO. Good luck.

[Roman]

Let's also remember this.....the oil comapnies are sitting on contracts that they STILL refuse to drill on, and now the RP and the companies are complaining that the DP is blocking them from drilling.

Why don't they drill on the contracts they already have?

[soapfan4life]

I have a question that I'm hoping someone can answer, the other day I was watching something and they were talking about Obama having a seal that is similar to the presidential one but I didn't get a chance to hear all the details, did anyone else see or read about this?

[EricaKane70]

I think I saw that headline on cnn.com, but I didn't read it or watch the vid.